LOL
I just received some Chamin Ultra-Strong as a promo from BzzAgent. I gave it a try and... I love this stuff! You all know that i'm all about getting the most for my money (cheap doesn't always mean the best value - Dollar store batteries anyone?). I ran the numbers on this TP and found that I use about 3x less than the generic 2-ply stuff that I had been buying. It still ends up being slightly more but only by a few cents per roll. But, it's crazy soft and I love it. Here's a coupon for those interested:
http://www.coupons.com/brands/charmin-coupons/?PLID=MEDIAADS&CRID=CHARMIN100114CHARMINFACEBOOKOCT_EXT
Monday, November 10, 2014
CryptoBlocker Issues
I just recently ran into another cryptoblocker problem. When it's setup you cannot install any version of MS Office from 2K10 up. Apparently Microsoft runs some stuff from the %localappdata% folder! You just disable the policies, gpupdate, install office, & re-enable the policies and all is well. I'm going to be adding a new windows 8.1 deployment image to our WDS Server which will bypass this but, what a PITA!
You know you have the issue b/c you'll get either a bootstrapper error or an unknown error and setup will just exit.
UPDATE: I just tested it on (3) PC's and disabling the GPO (un-linked it then gpupdate /force) did the trick.
Also of note; the cryptoblocker policies nerf Firefox and utorrent magnet links! To fix this you need to add some policies to enable them to run properly. Here is a link to get Firefox working:
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/396103-cryptolocker-prevention-kit-updated?page=10
Scroll down about 2/3 of the way and it's right there. Just replicate the process for utorrents exe and you're good to go.
You know you have the issue b/c you'll get either a bootstrapper error or an unknown error and setup will just exit.
UPDATE: I just tested it on (3) PC's and disabling the GPO (un-linked it then gpupdate /force) did the trick.
Also of note; the cryptoblocker policies nerf Firefox and utorrent magnet links! To fix this you need to add some policies to enable them to run properly. Here is a link to get Firefox working:
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/396103-cryptolocker-prevention-kit-updated?page=10
Scroll down about 2/3 of the way and it's right there. Just replicate the process for utorrents exe and you're good to go.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Internet Phone Service Update & Other Stuff
Ok, so remember when Obihai declared that Google Voice wasn't going to work after March blah blah blah. Well, they totally fixed it so all their devices work perfectly! They work great w/o Google's XMPP (even though it looks like they never actually killed it like they said!) with just a small firmware upgrade. After the upgrade/update installs; all you have to do is punch in your info. I went back to the obi100 unit that I've had since last year and it works like a champ.
I had purchased a netTALK Duo device during the panic phase. It wasn't very expensive and they throw in a year of 911 etc. with the unit. After you've had it a year then they charge you 34.99/yr for the 911 services and that's it. It's not a bad alternative and they had a really good selection of numbers available. The reason I switched back to the obi was simple: reliability. The obi almost never needs to be reset. I had to reset my netTALK unit every 48 hours or it wouldn't work. It was really obnoxious. It got progressively worse and I didn't feel like messing around with customer service (which is good BTW - I'm just lazy). I canceled my auto-payment and threw it into a drawer. I'll hold on to it for awhile and then probably e-bay it.
So in summary: Obihai is back in the free phone service game & the people rejoiced!
Next on the agenda: iCloud and why Apple hates used phones. (This is my personal conspiracy theory and isn't backed up by fact... or is it!)
Many of you are familiar with the awesome part of iCloud: You can backup 5GB of you iDevice for free and when you get a new one or break/lose your old one it moves all your stuff back. One of the feature included is "Find my iPhone". This little "gem" enables you to locate your iDevice via a web browser and figure out where it got lost / stolen and remotely wipe it & burn future activation. Sounds good right? Yeah - no. Consider the following scenarios:
Scenario 1:
International Widgets purchases an iPhone / pad / whatever for their employee. Now hopefully they have iMacs (which they probably don't) and can use apples deployment software. They set it up with a corporate iTunes account and enable iCloud / find my iPhone. Security Savvy company that they are; the disable removing the account and keep it registered to them. Joe User leaves / gets terminated and turns in his iDevice. IT wipes it and redeploys it to another user or removes it from their account and liquidates it. No Problem.
Scenario 2: (the evil one)
International Widgets purchases their employee a new iDevice and sets it up with it's own iTunes account and gives it to Joe User. Joe user doesn't want the company to see that he has an Angry Birds addiction so he removes the iCloud and iTunes accounts and adds it to his personal account. He then turns on find my iPhone and the rest of iCloud. 6 months later Joe leaves the company. He turns in his iPhone and IT wipes it. IT goes to activate the phone for Joe's replacement and finds that they are unable to b/c it's still tied to Joe's account and it needs his password. The company is unable to activate the phone... EVER. Now, they could attempt to get Apple to unlock it (Good Luck) or beg Joe for the password. This phone is now useless.
"But, that's just a side effect of the security it provides!" you say. "What if it got stolen? The thieves could just resell it!". You are 100% correct - that's what the marketing department wants you to think. They might even believe it themselves. ANY phone that gets stolen and reported gets it's ESN burned by the carrier and is unable to be activated. The iCloud lock is completely unnecessary. The carrier has your back. Why would apple need to do it too? The answer is simple: to drive sales of new equipment. They are basically killing the used phone market. I've checked on eBay and almost 30% of the used iDevices are iCloud locked and useless. I'm fairly sure that they aren't all stolen (the ESN burned ones might be however...). Plus, there are a lot more scenarios where a phone can be rendered completely useless (you can hack them so you can use them as an iPod only).
So in summary: This is just one more example of Apple's blatantly predatory business practices. It's a sad day when Microsoft and big G are looking all warm and fuzzy compared to the competition.
Why myself and a number of other Americans are overweight:
I'm going to try to keep the justifications down to a bare minimum so please be kind. This is just the short list:
1. Healthy food is expensive! Empty carbs and fat are mass produced and cheap! After my divorce stared - I have been left living on 45% of my income and she pays none of the shared back debt. I have a food budget of like $75 a month. At a certain point not being really hungry is a priority. So quantity over quality!
2. Healthy meals require more time to prepare than junk does. I work 2-3 jobs at any given time. I'm tired and lazy by the time I get home. Whipping up a meal isn't really high on my priority list. I have time on the weekends and try to get my weeks worth of lunches at least made but, it doesn't always work out. Plus, for those nights that you're really running behind: Enter Fast Food! (yuk) This one here is the economy and my fault.
3. Unhealthy food tastes awesome. I like pie.
4. Exercise takes time. As a society we sit... a lot. A lot of jobs aren't labor intensive and we are sedentary a lot of the time. By the time I get out of Job#2 - I've got no energy left and weekends end up as recovery time so I can do it all over again.
5. I smoke too much. I have days that suck so bad that I question why I bother getting up. Those little endorphin providing sticks are all that keeps me going some times. I know they are killing me. I know they are doing all kinds of other things but, man I love the nicotine rush.
What i'm doing about it:
1. I buy bag o' salads at Walmart (romaine), precooked frozen chicken strips, shredded cheese, croutons and Cesar dressing. Total investment per week is less than $10 and all my lunches are taken care of in about 5 minutes of assembly. I don't get more than 3-4 days worth of salad b/c it goes bad quick for me.
2. Protein shake for breakfast and a protein bar for a snack partway through the morning.
3. Apples / Bananas for a snack in the afternoon.
4. Crock pot dinners pre-made and put out in the morning, chicken / beef cooked w/ frozen vegetables, sandwiches w/ cottage cheese and veggies (cold and raw), or Pizza / Chinese food occasionally (bite me - don't judge).
I also try to cram in 2-3 15 minute exercise periods a week and installed a pull-up bar in the kitchen doorway.
I stopped gaining weight and lose 1-2 pounds a week so far. It still costs a bit more and I need to tighten up but these are small things we can all do.
And... Last but not least:
Why the electronics repair market died:
Walmart takes a huge beating and most of the blame on this subject. They sell stuff so cheaply - why would you get your stuff fixed? I'm not going to launch into a lecture on waste, landfills, & carbon footprint. We've all heard it several thousand times from the popular media so, i'm not going to beat a dead horse. That and I don't actually care about any of those things. I hate the waste. There are a lot of things that need simple repairs that get thrown out everyday and I hate to see fixable stuff get trashed. The reason for most non-repairs / waste: Cost of the repair is greater than the value of the unit. Here's and example:
Joe User buys a 32" LED TV. He uses it for 18 months and it stops working. Joe gets a repair estimate from one of the few remaining repair shops and it comes back for $200 ($100 in parts and $100 in labor - it had a bad power supply). Joe throws it out b/c he can buy a new one on a black Friday special for $100. Boom! Landfill here we come.
Now - back in the day: The technician would have tested the board and found the bad capacitors, changed 4 of them out for $.10 a piece, billed the customer $25 and everyone would have been happy. Well now in America we have a few problems:
1. Insurance / Liability - If the tech changes the capacitors his company assumes liability for the unit. If something happens - it's all on them.
2. Not many techs (comparatively) can actually troubleshoot individual components anymore. Most of them are just parts re-placers. This is partially the fault of Problem 1 above and the example scenario.
3. It's hard to even get parts - let alone quickly. You used to be able to go to the bins @ your local Radio Shack and you were set.
Thank god for eBay. You can get complete boards for like $25-$45 already tested or pulled from a unit with a cracked LCD. They are crazy easy to change out, cheap, and arrive in less than a few days. If repair isn't your thing - eBay give you an outlet to sell off your old TV and recoup some of the cost of a new one. You can also give them to me! LOL - no seriously give them to me.
I realize that was a pretty random collection of stuff but, I really wanted to get it all out there.
UPDATE: Sorry about the wonky spacing - I accidentally used IE to finish off the post and it nerfed the formatting. I corrected it and all is well.
I had purchased a netTALK Duo device during the panic phase. It wasn't very expensive and they throw in a year of 911 etc. with the unit. After you've had it a year then they charge you 34.99/yr for the 911 services and that's it. It's not a bad alternative and they had a really good selection of numbers available. The reason I switched back to the obi was simple: reliability. The obi almost never needs to be reset. I had to reset my netTALK unit every 48 hours or it wouldn't work. It was really obnoxious. It got progressively worse and I didn't feel like messing around with customer service (which is good BTW - I'm just lazy). I canceled my auto-payment and threw it into a drawer. I'll hold on to it for awhile and then probably e-bay it.
So in summary: Obihai is back in the free phone service game & the people rejoiced!
Next on the agenda: iCloud and why Apple hates used phones. (This is my personal conspiracy theory and isn't backed up by fact... or is it!)
Many of you are familiar with the awesome part of iCloud: You can backup 5GB of you iDevice for free and when you get a new one or break/lose your old one it moves all your stuff back. One of the feature included is "Find my iPhone". This little "gem" enables you to locate your iDevice via a web browser and figure out where it got lost / stolen and remotely wipe it & burn future activation. Sounds good right? Yeah - no. Consider the following scenarios:
Scenario 1:
International Widgets purchases an iPhone / pad / whatever for their employee. Now hopefully they have iMacs (which they probably don't) and can use apples deployment software. They set it up with a corporate iTunes account and enable iCloud / find my iPhone. Security Savvy company that they are; the disable removing the account and keep it registered to them. Joe User leaves / gets terminated and turns in his iDevice. IT wipes it and redeploys it to another user or removes it from their account and liquidates it. No Problem.
Scenario 2: (the evil one)
International Widgets purchases their employee a new iDevice and sets it up with it's own iTunes account and gives it to Joe User. Joe user doesn't want the company to see that he has an Angry Birds addiction so he removes the iCloud and iTunes accounts and adds it to his personal account. He then turns on find my iPhone and the rest of iCloud. 6 months later Joe leaves the company. He turns in his iPhone and IT wipes it. IT goes to activate the phone for Joe's replacement and finds that they are unable to b/c it's still tied to Joe's account and it needs his password. The company is unable to activate the phone... EVER. Now, they could attempt to get Apple to unlock it (Good Luck) or beg Joe for the password. This phone is now useless.
"But, that's just a side effect of the security it provides!" you say. "What if it got stolen? The thieves could just resell it!". You are 100% correct - that's what the marketing department wants you to think. They might even believe it themselves. ANY phone that gets stolen and reported gets it's ESN burned by the carrier and is unable to be activated. The iCloud lock is completely unnecessary. The carrier has your back. Why would apple need to do it too? The answer is simple: to drive sales of new equipment. They are basically killing the used phone market. I've checked on eBay and almost 30% of the used iDevices are iCloud locked and useless. I'm fairly sure that they aren't all stolen (the ESN burned ones might be however...). Plus, there are a lot more scenarios where a phone can be rendered completely useless (you can hack them so you can use them as an iPod only).
So in summary: This is just one more example of Apple's blatantly predatory business practices. It's a sad day when Microsoft and big G are looking all warm and fuzzy compared to the competition.
Why myself and a number of other Americans are overweight:
I'm going to try to keep the justifications down to a bare minimum so please be kind. This is just the short list:
1. Healthy food is expensive! Empty carbs and fat are mass produced and cheap! After my divorce stared - I have been left living on 45% of my income and she pays none of the shared back debt. I have a food budget of like $75 a month. At a certain point not being really hungry is a priority. So quantity over quality!
2. Healthy meals require more time to prepare than junk does. I work 2-3 jobs at any given time. I'm tired and lazy by the time I get home. Whipping up a meal isn't really high on my priority list. I have time on the weekends and try to get my weeks worth of lunches at least made but, it doesn't always work out. Plus, for those nights that you're really running behind: Enter Fast Food! (yuk) This one here is the economy and my fault.
3. Unhealthy food tastes awesome. I like pie.
4. Exercise takes time. As a society we sit... a lot. A lot of jobs aren't labor intensive and we are sedentary a lot of the time. By the time I get out of Job#2 - I've got no energy left and weekends end up as recovery time so I can do it all over again.
5. I smoke too much. I have days that suck so bad that I question why I bother getting up. Those little endorphin providing sticks are all that keeps me going some times. I know they are killing me. I know they are doing all kinds of other things but, man I love the nicotine rush.
What i'm doing about it:
1. I buy bag o' salads at Walmart (romaine), precooked frozen chicken strips, shredded cheese, croutons and Cesar dressing. Total investment per week is less than $10 and all my lunches are taken care of in about 5 minutes of assembly. I don't get more than 3-4 days worth of salad b/c it goes bad quick for me.
2. Protein shake for breakfast and a protein bar for a snack partway through the morning.
3. Apples / Bananas for a snack in the afternoon.
4. Crock pot dinners pre-made and put out in the morning, chicken / beef cooked w/ frozen vegetables, sandwiches w/ cottage cheese and veggies (cold and raw), or Pizza / Chinese food occasionally (bite me - don't judge).
I also try to cram in 2-3 15 minute exercise periods a week and installed a pull-up bar in the kitchen doorway.
I stopped gaining weight and lose 1-2 pounds a week so far. It still costs a bit more and I need to tighten up but these are small things we can all do.
And... Last but not least:
Why the electronics repair market died:
Walmart takes a huge beating and most of the blame on this subject. They sell stuff so cheaply - why would you get your stuff fixed? I'm not going to launch into a lecture on waste, landfills, & carbon footprint. We've all heard it several thousand times from the popular media so, i'm not going to beat a dead horse. That and I don't actually care about any of those things. I hate the waste. There are a lot of things that need simple repairs that get thrown out everyday and I hate to see fixable stuff get trashed. The reason for most non-repairs / waste: Cost of the repair is greater than the value of the unit. Here's and example:
Joe User buys a 32" LED TV. He uses it for 18 months and it stops working. Joe gets a repair estimate from one of the few remaining repair shops and it comes back for $200 ($100 in parts and $100 in labor - it had a bad power supply). Joe throws it out b/c he can buy a new one on a black Friday special for $100. Boom! Landfill here we come.
Now - back in the day: The technician would have tested the board and found the bad capacitors, changed 4 of them out for $.10 a piece, billed the customer $25 and everyone would have been happy. Well now in America we have a few problems:
1. Insurance / Liability - If the tech changes the capacitors his company assumes liability for the unit. If something happens - it's all on them.
2. Not many techs (comparatively) can actually troubleshoot individual components anymore. Most of them are just parts re-placers. This is partially the fault of Problem 1 above and the example scenario.
3. It's hard to even get parts - let alone quickly. You used to be able to go to the bins @ your local Radio Shack and you were set.
Thank god for eBay. You can get complete boards for like $25-$45 already tested or pulled from a unit with a cracked LCD. They are crazy easy to change out, cheap, and arrive in less than a few days. If repair isn't your thing - eBay give you an outlet to sell off your old TV and recoup some of the cost of a new one. You can also give them to me! LOL - no seriously give them to me.
I realize that was a pretty random collection of stuff but, I really wanted to get it all out there.
UPDATE: Sorry about the wonky spacing - I accidentally used IE to finish off the post and it nerfed the formatting. I corrected it and all is well.
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